Members of Congress Set to Question Mark Zuckerberg Have Received Money From Facebook PAC

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, is scheduled to testify before Congress on April 10 and April 11 about the social network’s role in up to 87 million people’s compromised information during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, according to NPR. A potential conflict: Members of congressional committees who will question Zuckerberg have been recipients of massive campaign contributions from Facebook’s Political Action Committee (funded by Facebook employees) and individual Facebook employees, according to findings by the Campaign for Responsive Politics, as reported by USA Today.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which will question Zuckerberg on Wednesday, April 11, received nearly $381,000 in contributions from the social media giant, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, a self-described "nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit" research group. Two Senate committees that will question Zuckerberg on April 10, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, also raked in a combined total of $604,000 in Facebook PAC donations, according to the group's analysis, as reported in USA Today.

In a post on its site from April 2017, Facebook disclosed that, when determining where its PAC funds go, it considers political candidates with a “key committee or leadership position." The organization said it also “considers whether an individual candidate’s policy stances are consistent with Facebook’s public policy agenda and business interests.” The Facebook PAC donates to both Republicans and Democrats as part of its campaign funding efforts, and USA Today reported that donations to Republicans were higher than those to Democrats.

In questioning Zuckerberg, the federal government is examining Facebook’s connection to a data firm called Cambridge Analytica, which worked with President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. The data organization entered the media spotlight on March 16 after accusations emerged that Cambridge Analytica had improperly obtained Facebook data through an app called thisisyourdigitallife and used that data to target voters in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump. The company has denied any wrongdoing.

Now the U.S. government will try to determine whether federal laws were violated by the Trump campaign in targeting voters. That task begins in the congressional committees that are scheduled next week to ask questions about Facebook’s data privacy and user information, according to Vox. In a press conference on Wednesday, April 4, Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook could have done more to protect user data during the 2016 election.

“We didn’t take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is, and that was a huge mistake,” Zuckerberg said in a press conference, as reported by Recode. “It was my mistake.”